Five boredom-busters for the school holidays
1. Explore the World Through Recipes and a Dress-Up Dinner
Go on a cultural adventure right in your own home! Find a recipe from your sponsored child’s country, research where you can buy the ingredients (you might like to explore a specialty ethnic grocery shop!) and cook the recipe together. Have a dress-up dinner inspired by your sponsored child’s cultural dress. Look up traditional clothing styles and let your kids create outfits using what you have at home. This is especially fun at Christmas when you can research your sponsor child’s cultural holiday traditions.
2. Write or Draw a Letter to Your Sponsored Child
Writing letters to your sponsored child is a great way for your children to create connections across the globe. Set up a letter writing space with paper, markers and crayons or login to your sponsor portal and app. Encourage your kids to write to their sponsored child or draw a picture for them. Not sure what to write about? Your local area, your pets, things your child is learning at school or how you celebrate holidays are all great options. Check out your sponsor portal or app for more tips and ideas!
3. Build a Global Creation in Minecraft
Got a Minecraft fan? Challenge them to create something inspired by your sponsored child’s community. It could be a school, a farm or even a whole village. Research the styles of houses, what the landscape looks like, and how sponsoring a child is helping their community tackle problems (eg. installing irrigation helps farmers to grow crops even when there are droughts, planting vegetable gardens at school helps kids to have more to eat, and building health centres helps everyone to get medical care when they need it). Then, have your child give you a tour of their creations and talk about how sponsorship makes a difference in the lives of children and their communities.
4. Grow a Vegetable Garden
Planting a garden as a family, even if it’s in small containers on your kitchen counter, is a fun way to get your hands dirty and experience how most of the world sources their food. Research common crops in your sponsored child’s country and see if you can grow them for yourself. You might like to try recycling your food scraps to make compost to fertilise your garden, too – it's a technique sponsorship teaches farming families all over the world to use to help their crops thrive.
5. Create an Ornament for your Christmas Tree
Find or make an ornament that represents your sponsored child or their culture. This could be a craft project, like painting a wooden ornament in the colours of their country’s flag or finding a small keepsake that reminds your family of your connection. Each year, add another ornament to your tree to represent the years you have known and cared for your sponsored child.